1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to a device and associated method for promoting prescription drugs to healthcare professionals. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to a device and method adapted to display promotional message data relating to a specific drug in response to receiving signature data from the healthcare professional.
2. Description of Related Art
Pharmaceutical companies employ an immense workforce of representatives who seek to promote company products to healthcare professionals and other healthcare professionals. (Hereafter, the term “healthcare professional” will be generally used throughout this description to denote any person providing medical or healthcare services, including without limitation healthcare professionals of all specialties, and other individuals acting under a healthcare professional's supervision or authority, or acting in conjunction with a healthcare professional, including without limitation; assistants, nurses, technicians, dietitians, front-office staff, etc.). Perhaps the largest and most expensive part of a representative's promotional efforts focus on providing drug samples to healthcare professionals and encouraging healthcare professionals to write more prescriptions for the sampled drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies spend enormous amounts of time and money educating pharmaceutical representatives about the companies' products and training them how to interact with healthcare professionals. For instance, the cost of training a single pharmaceutical representative may range up to $200,000 and require several months to complete. In addition these significant training costs, pharmaceutical companies compensate their representatives with generous salaries and benefits, and bonuses in order to encourage performance.
Unfortunately, the typical healthcare professional has little time to interact with pharmaceutical representatives. Healthcare professionals commonly restrict such interactions, often allowing only passing visits (e.g., 30 second to 2 minute) in a hallway between patient appointments. Often, the healthcare professional's sole motivation for allowing even these brief visits is the receipt of drug samples. However, government regulations require that the healthcare professional sign for any drug samples received. Thus, in extreme cases, a busy healthcare professional may sign for drug samples without any substantive interactions with a pharmaceutical representative.
Needless to say, these brief or non-existent interactions with a healthcare professional do not allow the pharmaceutical representative much of an opportunity to promote the companies' products. Thus, in many instances, the highly-trained pharmaceutical representative is little more than an expensive delivery person for drug samples.
One technique used by pharmaceutical representatives to compensate for their lack of quality face time with healthcare professionals is one of leaving behind promotional materials or marketing items such as product catalogs, books, charts, notepads, pens, mugs, and so forth. Ideally, these promotional items are tailored to a particular healthcare professional's practice or needs. In general, the promotional items serve both to educate the healthcare professional about particular drugs, and to entice the healthcare professional to prescribe more of the drugs.
Unfortunately, the time honored approach of leaving behind promotional materials has significant shortcomings. First, because the needs and/or wants of each respective healthcare professional are not generally known, pharmaceutical companies supply each representative with literally thousands of pounds of assumedly “most relevant” promotional items. This is very expensive and dramatically inefficient. Second, promotional materials provided by pharmaceutical companies require approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before they can be distributed to healthcare professionals. As a result, there is generally a significant lag time between approval of new promotional materials and their actual availability to pharmaceutical representatives. The lag time translates into lost marketing opportunities.
In addition to the problems posed by lack of face time with healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical representatives are also burdened with a responsibility of adhering to strict FDA standards. Broadly speaking, the relevant standards deal with (1) the content of a pharmaceutical representative's presentation to healthcare professionals, and (2) proper documentation regarding the distribution of drug samples.
The content of a pharmaceutical representative's presentation to healthcare professionals is closely regulated by the FDA. In particular, the FDA must approve all major claims made regarding a drug. In adherence to this policy, pharmaceutical representatives generally base their presentations on a “master visual aid” (MVA) prepared by the pharmaceutical company and approved by the FDA beforehand. The MVA typically includes therapeutic claims related to the drug, together with relevant pictures and supporting data (e.g., graphs, charts, text boxes, etc.). Failure to adhere to the FDA's guidelines governing the content of a pharmaceutical representative's presentations can result in serious legal penalties.
The regulations governing the documentation of drug sample distributions by a pharmaceutical representative are laid out, for example, in 21 C.F.R. §203.31. Upon delivery of drug samples to a healthcare professional (i.e., a “licensed practitioner”), or a healthcare professional's designee, the pharmaceutical representative must obtain the healthcare professional's or his/her designee's signature on a receipt containing information such as the healthcare professional's name, address, title, state license number, the quantity of the drug and so forth. The pharmaceutical representative uses this information to maintain mandatory inventory records for the pharmaceutical company. Historically, maintaining the receipts and inventories has been a significant burden on pharmaceutical representatives. Moreover, the receipts and inventories maintained by each pharmaceutical representative are commonly audited to make sure that the information is correct, and to verify that the person who signed for the drug samples is actually the healthcare professional or his/her authorized designee. This leads to even greater overhead and expense for the pharmaceutical company.
Some of the documentary burden placed on pharmaceutical representatives has been lifted through the use of technology such as computers, PDAs, and the Internet. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0088442 discloses a mobile computing device adapted to electronically capture a healthcare professional's signature upon delivery of drug samples, thus obviating the pharmaceutical representative's need to manage unwieldy receipt paperwork. The mobile computing device maintains a local inventory of the pharmaceutical representative's drug samples, and it can communicate with other mobile devices or a main database to transfer information about the overall distribution of drug samples. The mobile computing device is also equipped with a bar-code scanner for scanning drug samples when they are delivered.
Similar devices are disclosed in various commercial embodiments such as “Siebel Pharma Handheld”, “AvantGo Mobile Pharma”, and “Dendrite SampleEnforcer™.” All of these devices allow healthcare professionals or their designees to sign for drug samples on a mobile computing device, and additionally they provide various software applications to make the pharmaceutical representatives' lives more convenient. For instance, some of these commercial devices store healthcare professional profiles and schedules, they keep track of sample orders, inventories. They also allow new orders to be taken wirelessly.
Other technical advances allow healthcare professionals to browse through promotional information about pharmaceutical products on a computer instead of relying wholly on presentations from a pharmaceutical representative. For instance, Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0035484 (the '484 Application) discloses a mobile computing device used by healthcare professionals to write prescriptions. The handheld device stores a database containing educational or advertising information regarding specific drugs and other information originated from a drug company. The healthcare professional can browse through this information and prescribe drugs for patients through the device by biometrically authenticating the healthcare professional's identity through the device, (e.g., by a signature, a voice print, etc).
Unfortunately, these technology solutions fail to successfully address the pharmaceutical representative's most pressing problem—the lack of quality face time with the healthcare professional. Clearly, the opportunity to directly and specifically market their products to a healthcare professional is highly coveted by pharmaceutical companies—hence, the great expense and effort involved in hiring and training representatives and providing them with state-of-the art technology. Unfortunately, such expense and effort often fail to yield the desired result—a clear, timely, FDA-compliant, and targeted advertising pitch to the healthcare professional.